Does your Ayurvedic doctor lie to you that Ayurveda is scientifically tested?

Are you worried that your Ayurvedic doctor lies to you that Ayurveda is scientifically tested? I will let you know the truth as it is!

There is no reason for a doctor to lie to the patient . I don’t think that any ayurvedic doctor tells that to win trust. If a doctor says that the medicine is scientifically tested, then they mean it. I agree that the clinical trials done in ayurveda is poor when compared to modern medicine but Ayurveda is an evidence based medicine. The word Ayurveda literally means “the science of life”.

Moreover, there are several research papers published by the NCCIH and DHARA regarding the efficacy on drugs like ashwagandha, shatavari, brahmi, guduchi, jyotishmati and many more drugs. Also the chemical structures of the components present in a drug are studied.

Few examples of evidence based research in Ayurveda:

A preliminary clinical trial in 2011, funded in part by NCCIH, found that conventional and Ayurvedic treatments for rheumatoid arthritis had similar effectiveness. The conventional drug tested was methotrexate and the Ayurvedic treatment included 40 herbal compounds.

Ayurvedic practitioners use turmeric for inflammatory conditions, among other disorders. Evidence from clinical trials show that turmeric may help with certain digestive disorders and arthritis, but the research is limited.

Varieties of boswellia (Boswellia serrata, Boswellia carterii, also known as frankincense) produce a resin that has shown anti-inflammatory and immune system effects in laboratory studies. A 2011 preliminary clinical trial found that osteoarthritis patients receiving a compound derived from serratagum resin had greater decreases in pain compared to patients receiving a placebo.

The immunomodulatory activity of an Indian Ayurvedic medicinal preparation, Ashwagandna (Withania somnifera(L. Dunal)) was studied in mice with myelosuppression induced by one or more of the following three compounds: cyclophosphamide, azathioprin, or prednisolone. Ashwagandha prevented myelosuppression in mice treated with all three immunosuppressive drugs tested.

The mercury in the Ayurvedic medicine was in a stable chemical form comprised of robust nano particles. Working on Rasasindura, the medicine containing mercury, ordered from Arya Vaidya Shala in Kottakkal, Lahiri (Dept. of Nanotechnology) says “I have looked at nano particles all my life and at nano scales many things change. What amazed me is that in Ayurvedic medicine how wonderfully the size has been controlled.”

Researching upon prakriti types, the team of genetical engineers found a strong expression of the gene PGM1, which is responsible for sugar metabolism in the body, in individuals that were characterised as pitta dosha.

In general, Ayurveda is experiential, intuitive and holistic, whereas that of the modern medicine is based more on experimental, analytical and reductive reasoning says Dr Bhushan Patwardhan. The relationship between Ayurveda and modern science is similar to the relationship between the ‘whole’ and the ‘parts’, where the sum of the parts need not be equal to the whole.

Modern clinical research:

Even though people are accepting the “scientifically tested” modern medicines, there are scientific reasons that animal testing should no longer be the status quo.

Some drugs that are observed to be successful in animals are proven to be disastrous in humans. There are numerous examples of animal to human clinical trials going wrong for the specific reason that the animals reacted positively to the treatment, but the humans did not, Probably due to the fact that they are not the same species or due to the varying body mass index. Also to mention that Drugs that fail in animal models cause us to potentially ignore real cures.

According to Dr. Aysha Akhtar, “Of every 5 to 10,000 potential drugs tested in the lab, only about five pass on to clinical trials. Many don’t pass the animal tests because of species-specific results. Yet many of these agents would likely have worked spectacularly and been safe in humans.”

He also stated that “It seems almost incredible that the rat is the model so heavily relied upon when predicting human responses to toxic carcinogenic agents” given the “profound differences between the values of the human and the rat” in many bodily processes.

Above all that we have practical examples before us. The Health Ministry banned 344 fixed drug combinations in India in the year 2017 alone. All these drugs were once mentioned and marketed to be safe and known cure for various ailments. So what is the basis of this type of modern scientific research?

What do you care about? Being scientifically tested and disastrous or being evidence based and holistic? The choice is yours.